Run to Win

Over the past week, a lot of stories have broken that you’d rather not have to hear about in the world of running. Here’s a quick summary of what’s happening in the world.

Colleen De Reuck drops out of the Trials

The 43 year old Colleen De Reuck will not be able to compete in this year’s Olympic Trials due to injury and has been scratched from the race. She has competed in 4 Olympic Games, with her best finish in 1992 when she was 9^th in the Marathon. She ran for South Africa at the time. (More Info: USATF)

Bees send 30 runners to the hospital

In Saga city, Japan, a swarm of honeybees attacked the runners in a half marathon and sent 30 of them to the hospital. The bees swarmed in a black cloud and bit and stung the runners as they ran near a local riverbank. (More Info: Herald Sun)

At least 11 are dead on the starting line of a Sri Lankan marathon

In even worse race news, a suicide bomber suspected to belong to the Tamil Tigers targeted Sri Lankan Highways Minister Jeyaraj Fernandopulle at the starting line of a marathon in Weliweriya, about 12 miles from the capital city of Colombo. K.A. Karunaratne, a former Olympic Marathoner, was also killed in the blast along with at least 9 others. Over 100 people on the starting line were injured. (More Info: Times Online)

Protests follow and precede the Olympic Torch

The protests over China’s selection as host of the Olympic Games has been increasing. The torch had to be extinguished multiple times in Paris when the mob threatened to overrun it, and protesters are already hanging flags and banners on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco in anticipation of the Torch arriving next week. Hillary Clinton is calling for President Bush to boycott the opening ceremony in Beijing after China’s reactions to the latest civil unrest in Tibet. (More Info: NYT - ESPN)

Not All Doom and Gloom…

Not all of the news is doom and gloom though, and I’d rather finish up with an upbeat bit of news. A local story that I found very interesting is about Ivy Bergquist, who just ran her first marathon and is now preparing to run the Mount Washington Road Race. The interesting part of the story? Less than 3 years ago, she weighed 232 pounds, over 100 pounds more than she is currently carrying. After surgery and radical changes to her diet and lifestyle, she has managed to lose a whole lot of weight, regain her health, and discover a love and addiction to running. (More Info: Press Herald)

Hat tips for stories go to Runner’s World, ESPN, the USATF, and Teresa (a newsletter subscriber.)

• This week last year, I concentrated on the Eastern States 20 Miler. The night before the race, I published my race plan, which I followed up with a report card on how well I followed the plan. It is a good case study for those interested in doing such things themselves.
• In other racing news, I offered a reader some advice about running sub-16 in the 5k after a few years off. I also pointed out how to bypass the Mount Washington lottery without having already won the race. One of these days I’ll have to try to get into that race; it only has 1 hill.
• Continuing with this month’s theme on audio, I offered up some podcasts for runners. As far as I know, most of them are still going, although I don’t listen to them very often.
• The movie 300 involved a lot of actors who had to get into really good shape. Before shooting for the film started, they had a workout that was a “right of passage” of sorts for folks working the film, called the 300 workout. It is pretty tough, and I haven’t managed to do it yet. I also haven’t really tried.
• This week 2 years ago, I continued the animated lifting series with a demonstration of how to do an overhead triceps extension using a pulley, and the weekly series about the New Rules of Lifting continued, this time exploring the fourth and the fifth rules.

Photo by Random FactorI wrote last week about how the winners of the Mount Washington race get to bypass the lottery system for future races and obtain a guarenteed entry into the race. Now that the 2007 lottery has closed, and the lottery winners announced, did you make the list? If you have been trying to get into the race and never seem to be chosen as one of the lucky few, there is good news.

You can bypass the Mount Washington Road Race lottery without having to win the race. In fact, you do not have to win any race; you just need to run in a few of them. You need to run in 6 races, to be exact.
(Click here to continue reading…)

The Mount Washington Road Race is so popular that it requires a lottery to be allowed to participate. There is only one hill in the entire race, but that hill is over seven and a half miles long and climbs around 5000 feet. The lottery has been open since the beginning of March, and closes on the 15th. If you want to have a chance to run, then you need to register by Thursday. And seriously, who wouldn’t want to run up to the highest point in the northeast at 6,288 feet? With an average 11.2% incline over the entire course? Battling unpredictable winds? With only about 1000 other runners?
(Click here to continue reading…)

This week last year was predominantly about football. That’s the sort of thing that is usually on my mind at this time of year.

• I had a lot of fun climbing Mount Washington and doing a bit of camping.
• The Minnesota Vikings got a lot of mention after claiming that Mike Tice’s job is safe (and we all know how that turned out) and that they were going to build a new stadium.
• I also spoke about both of the Monday night football games that benefitted the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund, Giants “at” Saints and Washington vs Dallas. I only got to watch half of the latter game and the former game was a big joke.
• In non-football news, Craig Hansen got called up to the Red Sox and Leavander Johnson died less than a week after fighting Jesus Chavez.

I also wrote a short bit about gym etiquette that I really should revisit at some point in the near future.

Sore muscles plague everybody at some point in their lives; athletes just tend to control when it happens a little easier. Two days ago, I hiked up Mount Washington and then back down. Yesterday morning I was a bit sore, but I felt fine on my four mile jig jog (I would have gone further, but having not gotten home ’til 12:30, I only had a half hour until the football games started). I was not very sore at all last night when I went to bed. Not so this morning; my left cheek and the side of my leg were particularly sore.

Most of a day later, I can still tell that it is sore, but not so much that I am going to do anything special. I took today off, and will run again tomorrow morning. When my muscles are particularly bad I will sometimes ice them, and if it past soreness and into pain I might consider taking some ibuprofen. Usually, though, I just drink a lot of juice and stretch out at any conceivable time. A short jig jog is usually in order to help loosen up.

How do you usually deal with sore muscles?

Mount Washington stands almost 2 kilometers above sea level and is the tallest mountain in the north eastern US. Yesterday, I hiked up and down Mount Washington.
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